Origin Story
The word "pasteurized" printed on a milk carton hides the name of a great scientist. Louis Pasteur, the 19th-century French chemist and microbiologist, proved that food spoils because of microbes too small to see. He then discovered that heating a liquid to the right temperature could kill most of those microbes. Thanks to this method, wine and milk no longer spoiled so easily, and countless lives were saved. People named the groundbreaking technique after him: pasteurize. The reason we can drink milk without worry today is this scientist, whose name lives on inside the word itself.
Pasteur is also famous for developing the rabies vaccine. His name survives not only in the word pasteurize but in research institutes around the world (the Pasteur Institutes).
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Online Etymology Dictionarypasteurize (v.): 1881, "to subject to pasteurization," from the name of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), French chemist and bacteriologist, + -ize
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Oxford English Dictionarypasteurize: from the name of Louis Pasteur, who developed the process
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Merriam-Webster Dictionaryafter Louis Pasteur, who devised the process of heating to destroy microorganisms
Word Evolution
Words from the Same Root
Memory Hook
Inside pasteurize hides the scientist Pasteur. Remember it as "Pasteur made milk safe to drink."
""In a single word on a milk carton lives the name of a scientist who saved countless lives.""
